Find out if a item was approved

Question

is it possible to find out if a item was "approved" in the past although the item state is now "pending"?

I tried this caml query, but it does not work:

<Where><IsNotNull><FieldRef Name='PublishingStartDate'/></IsNotNull></Where>

I also tried to filter by the field "_level" or "_UIVersion" but all that did not produce the desired result.

Answer 1

SP Doesn't search historical versions in any out of the box setups that I'm aware of. SP limits the searching capabilities to published versions. There are third party tools that do this however.

If you wanted to have this information going forward, you could set up a Yes/No Field with a Approved?" as the label - and make it hidden on new forms. Have a workflow set it to "yes" when Status = Approved. Because it's hidden on new forms users won't be able to change it. Then it's searchable and sortable.